'The Whitecaps are in an interesting situation too, because, without being relegated, we’ve hit the reset button. Obviously bringing in Marc Dos Santos, someone with an incredible vision and technically, tactically, he’s an excellent coach, and a great leader.'

He took a few minutes out of his busy Wednesday schedule to talk about the Vancouver Whitecaps and RCD Mallorca, the soccer teams he is a part-owner of, before heading back to Los Angeles to help wife Lilla Frederick with their infant baby and four other children:

Q: We thought you were a sane man. Five children?

A: It’s one of those things. I never thought I’d have five. In some ways, I’m philosophically against it, with global warming, but it happened, and I tell you what, it’s the greatest thing in my life. It’s such a bad idea until you do it, and then you’re in love with each and every one of them.

Q: You’re on the ownership group of both Vancouver Whitecaps FC and Real Mallorca. Why did you decide to become a team owner?

A: Well, I can’t play (laughs). And if you can’t play, you might as well get in on the ownership side. That’s it. It’s an opportunity to be involved in the sport from a difference vantage point, and for someone who’s a football junkie, it’s pretty cool to be part of bringing MLS to Vancouver, and of a 102-year-old Spanish soccer club is pretty incredible as well.

Q: There is a video of you celebrating Mallorca’s promotion to La Liga. What’s happening with that team right now?

A: We won our first game of the year, and we lost our subsequent two. We’re in with some incredible teams, budgets are twice to 10 times what ours is. We really have to rely on our values and culture to try and perform at this level, to get enough results through the year to stay up, survive and solidify and improve.

A: In a sense, there’s similarities. I will say the best thing that happened to us in Mallorca is we got relegated to the third division two years ago. What it allowed us to do was reset, refine our process, to clear a lot of dead weight that wasn’t pulling in the right direction.

Although no one wants to go to the third division in Spain — there’s 80 teams, they call it ‘The Well,’ and it’s quite difficult to pull out of — for us, it gave us a chance to refine everything we were doing. The next best thing was we got lucky and hired a great coach who’s done an incredible job for us.

The Whitecaps are in an interesting situation too, because, without being relegated, we’ve hit the reset button. Obviously bringing in Marc Dos Santos, someone with an incredible vision and technically, tactically, he’s an excellent coach, and a great leader. He has a vision of how he wants to behave and play, and that’s invaluable.

But that being said, we’re like an expansion team right now. There’s so much turnover and change, we’re trying to support him. The positive is we’re hiring a new sporting director, this is a part of the reset and it’s exciting. It’s an opportunity to take a big step, but it will take some time.

I love this part of it, though. I love when people are down and counting you out and selling stock, but you’re doing all the right foundational things that will allow the club to grow to a place much greater than it currently or previously lived.

Q: Would you like to see relegation in MLS?

A: I think it would be great. It would be interesting to explore combining with Mexico and having at least two tiers, and figuring out a way where you could add to the sport, the viewership and fan numbers that way, and no one would necessarily take a big hit. That would be a solution that would be really exciting to explore.

Q: Recently, you tweeted out “Hang Tough Whitecaps FC” and got ‘ratioed’ on Twitter by irate supporters. As an owner, what would you tell those fans?

A: I was talking to the players. I know what it’s like to play on a team where nothing goes your way, and you’re a little undermanned, and they were going through a period where they played twice a week for a month, travelling on their off days, and having little time to prepare and grow, really they are an expansion team.

To go through a stretch like that in the first third or half of the season can be debilitating, so my point was it was a time to show your character, hang together, keep fighting, show your character and get some results because you kept with it. Fans are emotional. I’m an emotional fan.

But at the same time, when you’re on the ownership side, you have to be stable, stick to your values, and that’s what I think is great about the Whitecaps recently. They’ve started to declare some values and intentions.

As a passionate fan of the Whitecaps, I want it as much as everyone, but I also realize you have to work tirelessly behind the scenes to improve and refine things. And that’s what the Whitecaps are doing right now.

Q: This MLS season hasn’t gone the way anyone predicted. What positives have you seen as it heads down the home stretch?

A: Personally, I don’t know why people would have big expectations. There was a big turnover, a lot of new players, a new coach in his first year, very few players with MLS experience compared to other teams … personally, I took it as a first step to design his vision and start to implement it.

That’s a very difficult place to start having success right away — it’s not like he inherited a playoff team. I’ve always looked at Marc as an incredible hire, and someone we needed to support and give time to improve, and the culture to grow along with it.

For fans, I know they’re frustrated, but this is the time they should be excited. It will take time, and it’s frustrating. I love it when teams that I support go through this cycle, they start at the bottom, they reset, they build something, and you were there from Day 1, cheering it on and watching it grow.

I think, partly due to perhaps some mistakes and missteps, whatever reason, we’re at a place where we’re doing the exciting moves. Those are the first steps in building something great in building something long-term that can be great, something that you can identify with that can be sustainable.

Q: Fans are upset because there hasn’t been any sustained success — one playoff win in nine years. You talked about giving Marc time, but how do you feel about the executive level and the job they’ve done?

A: It’s not really my place to comment on that. And I think they are addressing that. They are trying to improve the resources in the front office by hiring Marc, by hiring a sporting director.

It’s a difficult league, look at all the money Toronto has put into it compared to the Whitecaps. Yes, they won a championship and made a final, but it’s been hard for them — even with their incredible resources — to stay on top.

It’s the type of league where, every year, a new team or a new contender emerges, and the next year, it’s someone else. We’ve definitely taken some lumps, but we’ve learned our lessons, I think, and I’m excited for this chapter that’s beginning.

Q: Marc strikes me as an excellent coach, but there are still many who are bullish on this team’s future, despite the record …

A: I agree. What do you expect when you look at the big picture at the start of the season? Such turnover, new coach, new environment, first year … these are the pains you go through when you reset.

Q: When will you be in Vancouver next?

A: I’d love to come up for a game, but you’ll probably have a much better chance at seeing me at a Galaxy game than in Vancouver, because with a 10-week-old at home, five kids at home, it’s tough to get away.

Q: The Galaxy? Does this mean you’re trying to lure Zlatan away from L.A. to the Whitecaps?

A: This summer has been really disappointing and unfortunate. I think it’s a confluence of events moreso than where the program is going. I think that’s where we have to be a little careful. Over the last 10 years, we’ve had a lot of NBA players come out, we’ve had a lot of retention of our top players. If you asked everyone three months ago, everyone seemed like they were playing and it looked like we would have a great team. So I don’t know that anyone forsaw, even at the beginning of the summer or the end of the NBA season, that we had a big problem on our hands. Everyone was really optimistic and positive, we’d hired a great coach, we’d had a lot of guys who had come up through the program that said they wanted to play.

For a number of reasons, we ended up not getting the turnout that we expected. It’s a gut punch, but at the same time, it was circumstantial.

And we’re talking about an era where these guys grew up differently. I can’t judge them for not playing. It’s not like when I grew up, and the national team was such a big part of your development. These guys are playing in the NBA when I would have been in college; they have so much access and opportunity, they’re being pulled in so many directions, they have the support of these billion-dollar franchises in the NBA … it’s difficult to throw in a six-week trip that’s a few weeks before (NBA) training camp.

The program has grown so much. It got really unlucky in the Venezuela game to qualify for the last Olympics. You look at that tournament, and Canada was outstanding. The average age was probably around 22 years old, and when they got to the game to go to the Olympics, they played like a young team. It’s easy for the Monday Morning Quarterbacks to say who should have been head coach, what the substitution patterns should have been, but the reality is that team out-performed expectations and largely dominated that tournament. Not going to the Olympics killed a lot of momentum.

This late summer, when a lot of U.S. players pulled out … it almost became the easy out to not play, because everyone else wasn’t — in both Canada and the U.S.

I don’t blame the players for that… it does mean the national team really has to dig in and see how we can overcome this. Although we’re frustrated, I don’t want to be too hasty with all the things we have built, and all the good things that have happened.

Q: With the U.S. also fielding a team bereft of its top talent, it feels like this is a North American problem …

A: How often does Canada have games? In Europe, all these countries are playing off in the European championships, which mean almost as much as the Olympics and World Cup. And those countries all border each other, (are in) close proximity, so there’s more rivalries and passion. There’s more touch points to watch and build a fan base. Whereas here, very rarely do you see the national team play, and very rarely do we have tournaments unless its qualifying for the Olympics or a World Cup. It’s a different landscape, and we have to address it.

Q: We talked about changing the culture with the Whitecaps and Mallorca; how do you do it for Canada? How do you make it an honour impossible to refuse to wear the Maple Leaf?

A: We’ve been doing it. I think we got caught a little off-guard this summer … but we have to take it a step further for the players. … We have to sit down with the players and ask ‘How can we make this an incredible experience for you? How can we make this something you don’t want to miss?’ When we get to the bottom of what makes these players tick and what they need from this to want to be involved … we’ll try to build it around them so these players can take collective pride in representing our country. All these young players are amazing people, terrific basketball players, we have so much talent, so much depth, but it’s a different era to try and re-introduce them to the benefits of playing for your country. … The developmental opportunity that were afforded me so much in my career, but also the memories. The best experience of my career was playing in the Olympics. It’s a different generation, and we have to get to the bottom of what we can do to make this worthwhile.